Instagram, maybe. Original Facebook? Easy to go cold turkey, tough to fully delete account though… it’s like deleting your contact list.
Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
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Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#172[deleted]
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate Reddit mostly for its hive mind. For example: There is a video of someone blasting music and neighbor clearly being upset. The offender calls the lady Karen. Then, all the comments are bashing so called "Karen". Even though many places in the US have laws in place to prevent people from blasting music all day. Stating this brings many down votes. I had an awful neighbor in an area where houses are close apart.…
Reddit is an amazing platform for niche hobbies and tech forums. It is fucking terrible for its political news. It's so clearly biased AND it leaks into every default subreddit.
> Reddit is an amazing platform for niche hobbies and tech forums.
I tried this for a while but the flagrant low-effort karma farming even on those subreddits drove me away. The last subreddit I still read towards the end was r/skookum. It was in interesting community for a while; a lot of neat heavy industry stuff. But I had to quit after seeing about ten thousand "look I found a wrench that says skookum on it, give me uptoots xD" posts.
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#174Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…
I feel as though it's impossible for anyone to write a thread on HN about Facebook without someone immediately coming in and saying that Facebook is stupid and they deleted their account years ago. Yeah, me too. But you usually don't have to look beyond your immediate family to find someone that uses Facebook (or at the very least an FB-owned property) a ton. We aren't typical!
But then I'm getting my novelty sugar hit by hitting HN forty times a day.
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel as though it's impossible for anyone to write a thread on HN about Facebook without someone immediately coming in and saying that Facebook is stupid and they deleted their account years ago. Yeah, me too. But you usually don't have to look beyond your immediate family to find someone that uses Facebook (or at the very least an FB-owned property) a ton. We aren't typical!
If quitting facebook is framed as impossible, then those who want to quit will feel helpless. Posts like the one above are helpful because they tell people that there is hope. You can quit facebook. Should we tell alcoholics that they'll never quit and their plight is hopeless? Or do we amplify the voices of those who succeeded in quitting, in the hopes that others may find inspiration to do the same? I'll do the lat…
I grew up in "Small Town America" in a large family and was really one of the "few" to ever move away (if any). The "problem" for me is that there really isn't an alternative to Facebook for sharing pictures and videos of my son and family for my close family to be a part of. I could have a personal blog, gallery, etc, but my grandparents that are on facebook (my son's great grandparents) don't get to see how much all of their friends enjoy them as well, etc.
In that sense, it's really not so much a problem. It's been an amazing crutch to a sort of depression caused by thoughts such as "my son is lucky enough to have his great grandparents and I'm across the Nation chasing money," etc.
I guess I'm one of the ones really stuck in the rut.
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#176I personally found Facebook hard to quit, but not entirely impossible. I would compare it to giving up cigarettes: not easy, but I got through it. I am coming to terms with the fact that I have have a very serious and damaging internet addiction, however. Like many serious addictions, there's a lot of shame attached to my real addiction, which is 4chan. 4chan is like being addicted to heroin. Every day is a battle to…
Creating a 4chan support group for ex-users would be very challenging. How many other 4chan addicts do you know in person?
Maybe just internet addiction then? Broaden the tent.
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#177Imagine if nicotine had network effects (edit: I mean as strong network effects as fb). You can't quit unless all your friends do too. I hear some alcoholics have a similar challenge when their social life revolves around drinking with peer pressure not to abstain.
While it was fortunately never a problem for me (I've never really drank a lot), when I did business travel for a living, it was pretty common to go to bars after work and expense some drinks to the company (the CEO knew about this, we weren't breaking rules). I remember thinking that if I were an alcoholic, this would either be the best job in the world or the worst job in the world, depending on your perspective. I…
Me stopping drinking ruined my career.
I was unable to compete in the deep dark of late night initiation/boozing ceremonies that still drive most major business deals in certain verticals.
When you’ve puked next to a ceo, they take your calls.
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#178Addiction is a complex subject. Personally, I think FB/Social engagement is habituation, but if somebody shows me there is a persisting dopamine/oxy rush, and its affecting neurotransmitters such that when you don't do it, you feel down, I might change my mind.
"addiction" is this decades "Schizophrenia" or "bipolar" being misapplied, when it has specific meaning.
I should of course add, not a doctor, not a clinical psychologist. Maybe habituation and addiction are closer than I think.
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#179Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…
it's not that Facebook is boring or interesting, it's that we're hostages [1].
If I would delete my Facebook, I would lose contact to a whole slew of people I've encountered over the years, who I chat to once in a while over messenger, or I see that they've done something. It's bitter to cut these people out of my life.
(here the 'addict' image works again; former addicts often need to cut their drinking/drug buddies out of their life to stay clean, even though they may be real friends)
Stopping myspace, on the other hand, felt a bit less bitter, perhaps because that was more like an adolescent phase everyone grew out of.
[1] hostage term from @doctorow https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1441107515865849866
Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit
#180I think “most” is a little exaggerated. Most people I know rarely post anything or when they do it’s actually useful. Same for Twitter. I don’t know anybody who posts a lot or gets into flame wars.